Posted
by
timothyon Saturday February 26, 2011 @02:00PM
from the why-call-it-a-recycle-bin-when-it's-trash? dept.

dsginter writes "During a recent Windows 7 upgrade, I disabled the 'Recycle Bin' from appearing on the user desktop. Why? Because this allows the users to retrieve errant deletions. While this was the goal of the 'Recycle Bin' in the first place, most people (including myself) are in the good habit of keeping a tidy workspace and 'taking out the trash' when they see that it is full. For some people, their OCD meant that deleting a file was a two step process: delete the file and then empty the recycle bin. By disabling it from view, I have found that the original function is restored for the smattering of times that it is actually needed. Why are we wasting pixels on such a poor metaphor?" Going further, is there some combination of metaphor and method of use that you'd find more useful or natural?

Fragmentation of the file system is no issue in our times.Hard Disks are so big, you basically always have a big enough chunk to save a file.E.g. if you save a movie... no modern OS is spreading that big file over lots of small groups of blocks.Open a big word document, save it again. You can basically bet that the file is saved in a new location on the hard disk and not on top of the old file. That is the reason why "restore lost files" tools work.

That is true if old files are always deleted by emptying the trash. But if all the files are kept until the disk is completely full and only then deleted one by one to make sufficient space, fragmentation is going to be terrible unless some kind of defragmentation is done at that time (which will slow the file system to a crawl whenever you save a big file). Or is your disk big enough to contain every file you'll ever make?

Fragmentation hasn't been a problem for a really long time, it's just that some filesystems like NTFS don't spend the time to place files in a way that prevents it. I don't think I've ever seen a UFS filesystem with more than a couple percent fragmentation that wasn't practically completely filled up.

Ergo, fragmentation is a problem. The majority of users use Windows, therefor NTFS and defragmenting is a must.
And because Windows throws everything into one partition re-arranging files is a must too. We use MyDefrag [mydefrag.com] to speed up customer's pc's when they come in for maintenance because they're slow.

I've always wanted this feature. Eliminate the "Recycle Bin" and just have a feature like Time Machine that will let you retrieve earlier versions of a file and previously deleted files. A Log-structured file system [wikipedia.org] would eliminate the fragmentation issue, make the implementation of this feature easier, and also provide some performance enhancements.

With the "previous versions" feature, does Windows 7 even require a recycle bin? Seems like it would be almost completely useless. I haven't used the recycle bin in years. I'm quite confident when I delete a file, that I really wan to delete it. I almost always use SHIFT+delete when deleting files.

Why not make the recycle bin a separate filesystem? Allocate a block of disk of pre-defined size for the recycle bin.

Because that would cause deletions that now run in O(1) to run in O(n) (at least); a deleted file (maybe an 80 gig video file) would have to be copied to the deletion FS before the deletion operation was complete. The idea of the Trash Can (eff this Recycle Bin noise) is that it's an abstraction that lives on top of the filesystem and allows interaction with files without regard for their filesystem, or if they're even filesystem entities at all; they might be resources on a WebDAV server, or references to files on an FTP or SMB. Trash Cans are entities of the Desktop Manager and are used for managing the user's session with the Desktop, and only presents of facade of underlying operations. And your rules for dealing with all the exceptional cases basically would make it impossible for a casual user to know if his file was even going to stay in the trash, or if they'd even be able to go in the trash at all (instead of going straight to being unlink) with a sudo, or constantly putting up "Are you sure you want to... This can only be deleted if..." messages).

An 80gb file wouldn't end up in the recycle bin, there's a size limit on that, unless they've changed that in recent times. Plus you're right about the rest of it, when you delete a file it gets renamed and moved to the recycle bin, which is pretty cheap as far as operations go. Moving it to another partition would be quite a bit more resource intensive and add an opportunity to corrupt the data.

Perhaps that would give the user more time to decide they really wanted to purge this... Maybe this will cause them to be more careful with the delete command?

There's a difference between protecting the user from a careless action, and presuming every action of the user is careless and requiring them to prove to the OS their carefulness -- there was a reason everyone made fun of Vista's security validation screens, it was b

I disagree. In the workplace, you're not the owner of your machine. I've never worked in an office that allowed me to do whatever I wanted with a computer. Maybe certain websites were blocked, maybe I couldn't install stuff. Maybe something I would have liked on the Desktop wasn't there. In a lot of cases, Admin can setup your computer however they want, because THEY are the ones who have to fix it when it's broken. I think he's well in line with what he should be allowed to do. The very first time someone

He hasn't disabled it, he's removed it from the desktop to try to discourage the user from immediately emptying it after deleting a file. I'm sure a user with the knowledge/insight to wonder where it's gone and miss its functionality would be able to re-enable the icon or at least request the admin to do so.

But an admin disabling the Recycle Bin because he thinks it's a shitty metaphor is just fucking stupid. Your users might except the recycle bin to be there, or they might even *gasp* use it correctly!

He also presented a valid and functional reason to disable it. Some users were having problems because they weren't using it correctly. By hiding the icon, he assured that the functionality works for everybody, not just those who use it "correctly".

The point is that, as stupid as it may be, the owner of the machine SHOULD have omnipotent power over what happens, and is or is not allowed.

Nonsense. A computer provided to an employee is a tool for that employee's use. To get the best results, that employee ought to be able to configure and customize that tool in any way that helps them work more efficiently.

I work with Real Computers, and don't use a "Trash Can" or "Recycle Bin", but if some pissant sysadmin told me I wasn't allowed to alias rm to '/bin/rm -i' or ls to 'ls -F', I'd laugh in their face; and if I were sanctioned by management for doing so, they'd find themselves without my services, since it would be pointless to continue working for a company so clearly doomed.

i think you are misunderstanding the type of user OP is dealing with. these are not "I need read/write permissions in/blah/blah" users, these are "i think my cup holder is broken" users. These are users who move their important shit to the trash because they are too stupid to create a new folder and name it something, then they empty the trash, then they call IT in a huff because "your system ate my files get down here and fix it NOW"

>these are people who really shouldn't be allowed to operate equipment more complicated than an adjustable 3 hole punch.

Fine, but we shouldn't make site-wide policies based on the stupidity of the worst of the worst. Thats the real problem here. Because you have one moron, that doesnt mean you need to punish the other users with stupid UI decisions like "Oh, lets get rid of the recycling bin for all because Jane can't figure it out."

Any competent admin would be able to retrieve those deleted files and pr

these are people who really shouldn't be allowed to operate equipment more complicated than an adjustable 3 hole punch.

Dude, think about that for a minute. Sure, there are people like that. Is hiding the recycle bin really going to solve your problems with them? If they're too stupid to know not to pour coffee on their machine, or to read and understand a message telling them they can't send more mail until they delete something... I submit that, yeah, they ought to have their machines taken away. Hiding th

IT is a service provided to other parts of the company, they have certain responsiilities and the employees using their services also have responsibilities and restrictions. But when the IT department decides it owns everyone's desktop you end up in a bad place where procedure overrules actual use cases and stuff just takes forever to get done.

At work, my machines are my responsibility. If I don't have AV or a firewall I may get in trouble if I don't have a good reason. If I

I generally try to keep my slashdot comments relatively positive but the level of stupid in this thread is just enormous.

The point is that, as stupid as it may be, the owner of the machine SHOULD have omnipotent power over what happens, and is or is not allowed.

IT doesn't "own" the computers any more than the users "own" the computer. The company "owns" the computers.

Challenging IT's computer sovereignty is something only upper management has any business doing. Users who attempt to do so should get sanctioned, and rightly so.

Perfect philosophy if your goal is to get outsourced. Seriously, whenever I have an employee that thinks this way I have to educate them. IT's job is to empower the users to get their job done more efficiently. Period. You serve the users.

Users "own" the applications, in a logical sense. It's their responsibility and their right to be an integral part of the process in determining how it functions. It's a two way street.

There are some things that each side is correct in putting their foot down and drawing a line in the sand - and this one is firmly owned by the users.

I'm not defending the action itself, only his right as the IT dept in his company to do it. It was suggested that he was out of line, and I think to the contrary. He was mandated to run IT as efficiently as possible, and anything he thinks is going to make his job more efficient, is his right to implement. Whether or not this move will be helpful or wise in the long run wasn't what the Parent was talking about.

It's why so many companies lock down the desktop to a varying degree - Windows (to be fair, any desktop OS) has a whole plethora of ways that the innocent can shoot themselves in the foot. One of the aims of locking down the desktop is to reduce this, and hence reduce helpdesk calls.

Regarding the recycling bin - you heard the (probably apocryphal) one about the secretary who used the paper recycling box on her desk as a "pending" tray? The

That's a bad habit that I got into. My best option was to make a normal deletion "easier" by disabling the notification when I hit the Delete button. I mean, that's what the Recycle Bin is for; to save your ass from accidental deletions. Notifications are just another layer and should be limited to the more "permanent" deletions, like Shift+Delete.

Sure, there are free recovery tools to really save your ass, but you run a greater risk relying on those over the Recycle Bin.

Yup, I never use the bin, and there's no real reason to delete anything anyway unless it's software that I don't want to use anymore, and that can easily be re-downloaded. I wouldn't really care the bin was just hidden from me until I need it as specified in the summary, but I don't think I'd need it personally.

Versioning on the other hand is much more important, but for that I just save as a new file every time, I don't especially need a file system designed for it, that seems too abstract a concept for

Much more useful to Shift-Delete files you really want (albeit insecurely) gone, and don't worry about the ones in the Trash, which are only taking up otherwise unused disk space. From the summary:

Why are we wasting pixels on such a poor metaphor?

It's only a poor metaphor for the few really anal retentive people who can't be bothered to learn how and why their OS works. But that's not right - the metaphor isn't in error - Trash works just like a trash can. Put stuff in and take it out, empty it when it's full or stinks. What the writer wants is an incinerator.

What the submitter wants is a garbage chute that the users can throw files in and not be bothered by a trash can that they can see. (Actually a garbage chute for each user... not like one shared in an apartment building.)

Maybe you're right and only a few overly anal people compulsively empty their trash cans, or maybe the submitter is right and this affects most computer users.

Either way, I just wanted to point out that he's not asking for an incinerator: which would destroy files immediately. Submitter wan

OK, people don't use their computers all in the same way. I don't know what made the author think that the majority deletes everything immediately after dropping files in the recycle bin. I don't. Can't tell if I'm with the majority, but I can tell that my behaviour changed as the hard drive space increased. With my current PC, it is not unusual that I have several gigabytes of stuff in the recycle bin. Occasionally I see total free space getting low-ish and I remember that I haven't purged the bin for mont

I never understood the idea of icons and/or things running on the desktop. To see or access anything, I need to move or minimize or do whatever to access that. And then those that have several million (ok, a few less) icons and files on their desktop.

Sure you can use a some shortcut to show it, but that is a workaround. I rather have a second, third... Xst 'start' button to show those icons. e.g. one start button for main programs, one for main folders, one for last files and one as it is now.Luckily I am

And if it was important, it was in SVN anyway, so I can always get it back from the server if I deleted the wrong thing. The Recycle Bin exists because Microsoft wanted to emulate the Macintosh as much as possible in Windows 95. The Trash can exists because the designers of the original Macintosh wanted to build one of the only general purpose computers without any sort of command line.

It goes from empty to full because it's hard to tell on a modern screen if it's a couple percent or completely full. Plus the whole point of it is that it's not empty. They're not trying to tell you how full it is, they're trying to tell you that it's full enough to empty.

I remember on my roommates' old PowerMacs with old Mac OS (not X), they had programs that showed how much was in the trash can, but with a liquid state. I would love to see that today in all OS' including Windows. Do they exist?

I don't see why you can't just symlink it to/dev/null. If you are going to delete something, delete it already. If you might want to save it, save it. For all the rest (accidental deletion) there are snapshots, versioning systems or backups. The 'Recycle Bin' or 'Trash' is not used properly by anyone because it adds an unnecessary step. I loathe taking out the trash at home and I wish that everything you put there could automatically go wherever it goes when I put it on the curb. Computers are supposed to

Because, I actually want to have an easy way to empty the recycle bin. It's utilization of disk space wasn't a major concern for many year, but now with the introduction of SSDs, and the fact that huge SSDs are not yet affordable, I find myself running out of space on mine quite often. When I do, I tend to find I've got some large files sitting in the recycle bin.

Why is the Windows trash can a folder, yet I can not just browse the contents? In KDE I can just look in the folder and treat it just like any other, and I can purge by date to clean it up. All files are exactly what they were before but with the one additional option to restore it.

Wait, it's not? I open mine and I get an explorer list of everything in it. Sure, I can't view the actual files, or go into subdirectories, without restoring them. But I can sort by date modified, size, date deleted, container type, name, or location - and those are just the default columns.

You just answered your own question - if you can't view the files or navigate subdirectories then it's not a folder, it's a special-case that opens a window that happens to have the same GUI decorations as a standard Explorer window with the one function of selecting files in order to restore them.

It's a special folder. The way that deleting things on Windows works is that it renames the file and moves it to a directory within the recycling bin. I'm not sure how it determines the name for the file, but I'd suspect that it has to do with the name and path of the file. It likely has to do with naming conventions and wanting to combine multiple drives deleted folders into one bin.

I like the idea of a recoverable deletion bucket. But, it should be less intrusive. Deletions should occur without prompts and if users want to recover files, they know where to go. Additionally, the system should treat the deletion bucket like a stack where deleted files are permanently removed as more disk space is needed.

How could this possibly be a good idea? And how can you implement this and then accuse every other Windows user of having OCD? Pot. Kettle. Black.

This is an absurd personal preference to force on your users, and a good example of an admin crossing the line from "ensuring the system works well" to "forcing the users to compromise their workflow because of the personal whims of the admin". Admins are supposed to keep users from interfering with the operation of the system, but it's equally important that they don't interfere with what the users are doing more than they absolutely have to.

This is right up there with admins who don't set the time properly / leave the display at a ridiculously low resolution, then lock down the preference setting so it can't be adjusted.

On the contrary, he's streamlining the system so that it works for his users. I seriously doubt that the users like to have to delete, confirm a delete, and then empty the bin. They're also probably pissed if they accidentally get rid of a file and he can't recover it because they've emptied the bin.

There's no great use to having the bin icon on the desktop. It's a convenience if you happen to frequently delete a lot of files you meant to keep (huh?), but otherwise it's probably a "me to" remnant of some UI designer that though the apple trashcan was a good idea.

But is the business paying for the time it takes to retrain users how to handle the lack of a recycle bin? I think that's the point, that if the company isn't asking for the retraining on something like this it shouldn't be given. All it does is cause headaches for end users who can't or won't learn to use their computers properly.

Dude, they're your users. If stupidity protection is something they need, and it's not something your backups provide, then it's time you thought about redesigning your backup scheme to handle it better.

Your point number one would have limited benefit for anyone other than a software developer working on code or a website because most of the data in those user cases would be text but then it would be redundant since any competent developer should be using a source repository like SVN in the first place. The average user's data probably has a lot of binary components to it like images, video and sound so recreating an SVN-like versioning would not work very well. Versioning systems like SVN do store increme

Fuck whether or not N=NP. Can users handle the power and responsibility of a recycle bin icon on their desktop? This, THIS is the most important open question in Computer Science. Naturally, this too is equivalent to the God Poutine question [qwantz.com].

Frankly, the "Recycle bin/trash" is a good(but not perfect) UI convention for a great many common computing situations. It serves as a reasonable recovery point/"in retrospect I fucked up" self help tool. It also imposes basically no requirements on the system/filesystem architecture. Would minor little additions(like having it automatically sort items by date/time of deletion) make it better? Sure. Is there anything fundamentally wrong? Not really.

Arguably, it has been "practically there now" for ages. Google Docs has it, Assorted revision-control systems have taken a bit of setup; but have had it(and boatloads of features besides) for years. VMS had it at the filesystem level back when a VAX was some pretty bitchin' hardware... NTFS volume shadow copies are in something of the same vein, as are the snapshotting features provided by most SAN vendors, Sun's ZFS, Oracle's BTRFS, etc, etc.

If you believe the Apple PR machine, then Lion will have exactly what you describe - a universal, transparent, application-level revision control system with a pretty GUI. I'm sure this will require specific implementation by each developer rather than being an OS / FS level interface, so will take some time to appear fully and may never be implemented in some apps. What will be interesting is how (if at all) it interacts with Time Machine. If the Time Machine interface can intelligently handle these rev

Really -- you're focusing on lost desktop space and some kind of extra effort to delete files "permanently"?

IMHO, the bigger issue is that the Trash (MS called it Recycle because it sounded more PC and Apple already had a Trash) metaphor combined with large disk drives allows people to turn the Trash into a storage place (like Outlook's Deleted Items).

OK, this is and of itself isn't an issue, but periodically the trash gets emptied and then usually someone (sorry, women in marketing, but you're the most com

- It is an icon, and all icons except this one represent applications. It breaks the metaphor.- The concept of an undelete-store has some merit, but it absolutely needs to have a limited lifetime for its content.- It is hard to find as it has no fixed location. And it eats icon space without good reason.- Because it has no fixed position, the notion of drag&drop to it is fundamentally broken. Delete has to be a fixed gesture or command, not a variable one,

??? Maybe on your desktop. Icons on a Windows desktop can be, or be shortcuts to, applications, files, filesystem locations, URLs (smb, http, ftp). The Windows Desktop is simply a filesystem directory like any other.

I suppose in one sense those are all OPENED by applications, if by applications you mean passing the link to explorer.exe to handle - but in that case then the Recycle icon opens the explorer.exe application to a specific

Icons also represent documents, folders, and "the Desktop", whatever that means. I think the Recycle Bin is supposed to be like a folder, which is why it can be moved around, although in reality it's a special case GUI function. I prefer the Mac metaphor where it has a fixed location although it's annoying that there's no way to get a link to it on the left bar of a Finder window, which means always dragging all the way down (or across in my case) to the edge of the dock. It's redundant really, because y

I thought that was THE metaphor for deleting files, dragging them to the shredder.

Plus, my wife edited a.wav of a chainsaw buzzing followed by a scream and associated it with the action of shredding a file. That added to the effect, you shred a file, hear it get cut up and scream its last. The message it re-inforced was FILE DONE GONE!

I've only just skimmed the summary, but I completely agree, it'd be wonderful to have multiple recycle bins, each a different colour so I can organize my trash. I put red files/icons in the red trash, and green ones in the green etc. I'm pretty sure this helps the OS with housekeeping, because it makes it easier to restore the bits for future files. Sometimes, the colour is not seen before, so I've set up a system to pick the trashcan colour from a colour wheel - this helps organization further.

On top of this scheme, I have various levels of trash: shallow, deep, and megadeep. When I first delete a file, it goes into the shallow trash so that I can restore the file immediately if I've made a mistake. If I'm really sure I don't want a file, or I need more disk space, every so often, I dig into the shallow trash, and move them into the deeper trashcan, and again with the other levels, finally to be deleted at the end of the chain. It's cumbersome, but this way I can make sure I won't delete very important files too easily.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder leads to get another Windows "administrator" deploying policies to make the system less user friendly. Bravo!

Want the recycle bin cleaned up? Try doing it properly - deploy powershell and create a service similar to the temp cleanup script on better systems (like UNIX and UNIX clones) where temp files, or in your case, the recycle bin is cleaned up automagically after (n) days. Or, just leverage the cleanup utilities built into Windows. Or, better yet, if you want a single-st

You should never actually need to empty the recycle bin, ever. You can adjust the size of the recycle bin and Windows will automatically delete the oldest files once the recycle bin is at capacity, allowing you to retrieve recently deleted files you realize you want back. That is the purpose of the recycle bin.

You are correct that it is pointless to delete things twice. However you are wasting your time and defeating the purpose of the system by emptying your recycle bin.

Unless you are running some ancient relic of a home desktop, storage space should hardly be an issue. When deleting extremely large files they bypass the recycle bin and are directly deleted...so there is no need to pedantically empty it. As you noted, it is a waste of user time to do so.

However I can't tell you how many times I have found occasion to desire something that was previously deleted...perhaps months ago. Sometimes we make stupid decisions. Sometimes when going through and cleaning up files we accidentally delete the newer version and leave the older version. Sometimes when working ona project we make changes that later on don't end up working out so well and we decide we want to roll back to a later date. There are countless unpredictable reasons why we may want to retrieve a previously deleted file.

The correct way to use the recycle bin is to delete things and then forget about them. If you ever need that space, which you won't, you can manually empty it. Until that time, it is a waste of your time to empty it, and will probably come back to bite you someday when you realize it was a providing a function that's actually useful.

I think anyone who swears theyve never needed to recover a deleted file is either full of it or has a bad memory.

As far as Windows goes, I've been in the habit of moving the Recycling Bin off of my desktop for years now. It wastes space in an area that I like to keep as clean and free from icon as possible. If I'm not actively working on a project, it shouldn't be on my desktop. It's kind of like my real world tables, I suppose. Where is the Recycling Bin to go if not on the desktop? Well, I put it in the Start Menu where you would normal have all of those useless "recently used" links.

No. The trash bin is a good metaphor because the meatspace version is not immediately destructive. You can always pull stuff back out of the trash before the can has been emptied because it got filled up.....I think someone has entirely too much time on their hands and Slashdot is having a really slow news day.

It's the opposite, really. He's proposing hiding the desktop icon to increase the likelihood that the users won't "double" delete stuff to keep the bin empty. The bin's functionality would still be available in other areas. Explorer, I believe has an icon for it, for instance.

It stimulated discussion on an associated topic, security. Look past the surface, mate - secondary considerations are often indicators of something people really want to discuss. And there are a lot of divergent opinions, and in their elaboration, lurkers form their own opinions, some are educated and the purpose of a technical forum is fulfilled.

Because for one thing, the bin by default limits itself to 10% of the size of the disk, and I'm pretty sure that for larger disks, no matter what percentage you select, there's a hard limit to how much space the bin will take up (automatically deleting things to keep under the max size). And what the hell does RAM have to do with it? Windows is not keeping the contents of the recycle bin in RAM, for heaven's sake.